The article overlooks that "ads" goes beyond just ads on the search results page. Ads is the main problem, in the form of Google's business model which dissuade

The article overlooks that "ads" goes beyond just ads on the search results page. Ads is the main problem, in the form of Google's business model which dissuades them from actually improving search result quality. Spam/SEO/etc sites are very easy to detect - use the presence of ads, analytics, affiliate links, newsletter signup forms, etc as a negative ranking signal, and the problem will be resolved quickly. This can't be evaded, because the same techniques used to evade search engine detection would be abused by ad fraudsters. The reason they don't do that is that those spam sites help Google in multiple ways - not only do they increase engagement with the search result page ads (the ads might actually be better than the "organic" but spammy results), but the ads/analytics on the spam sites are likely to be Google's which helps them too. This would not be a problem with any search engine whose incentives are aligned with the users' (Kagi has a "non-commercial" feature for example that I suspect roughly implements the above).